Biden will highlight election year at annual correspondents’ dinner as protests over Gaza war await

WASHINGTON (AP) – President Joe Biden is scheduled to give an election year speech on Saturday night in front of a large crowd of journalists, celebrities and politicians, against the backdrop of growing protests over his handling of the Israel-Hamas war.

In previous years, Biden, like most of his predecessors, used the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner to stimulate media coverage of his administration and attack political rivals, notably Republican rival Donald Trump.

But with protesters vowing to gather outside the dinner site, any effort by Biden to downplay Washington’s weaknesses and the pitfalls of the presidential campaign will have to be balanced with concerns about the war and humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the dangers for journalists covering the conflict. Criticism of the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s 6-month-old military offensive in Gaza has spread to American college campuses, with students setting up camps in an effort to force their universities to divest from Israel. Counterprotests support Israel’s offensive and complain of anti-Semitism.

Biden’s speech before an expected crowd of nearly 3,000 people at a Washington hotel will be followed by “Saturday Night Live” entertainer Colin Jost, who is sure to take some jabs at the president and his opponents alike.

There will likely also be a spotlight on the many journalists detained and persecuted around the world for doing their jobs, including the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovichwho has been imprisoned in Russia since March 2023.

But before the president arrived at the Washington Hilton – where the event has been held for decades – he was expected to pass hundreds of people gathered along the path of Biden’s motorcade and nearby to draw attention to the large number of journalists Palestinians and other Arabs killed. by the Israeli military since the start of the war in October.

Authorities, including the Secret Service, instituted additional street closures and other measures to ensure what Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said would be the “highest levels of safety and security for participants.”

The agency was working with Washington police to protect protesters’ right to assemble, Guglielmi said. However, “we will remain intolerant of any violent or destructive behavior.”

More than two dozen journalists in Gaza wrote a letter last week, they called on their colleagues in Washington to boycott the dinner entirely.

“The price charged to us for merely fulfilling our journalistic duties is staggering,” the letter states. “We are subjected to detention, interrogation and torture by the Israeli military, all for the ‘crime’ of journalistic integrity.”

One organizer complained that the White House Correspondents Association — which represents the hundreds of journalists who cover the president — has been largely silent since the first weeks of the war about the killings of Palestinian journalists. The WHCA did not respond to a request for comment.

According to a preliminary investigation released Friday by the Committee to Protect Journalists, nearly 100 journalists were killed while covering the war in Gaza. Israel defended its actions, saying it was targeting militants.

“Since the start of the war between Israel and Gaza, journalists have paid the highest price – their lives – to defend our right to the truth. Every time a journalist dies or is injured, we lose a fragment of that truth,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martínez de la Serna in a statement.

Sandra Tamari, executive director of the Adalah Justice Project, a US-based Palestinian advocacy group that helped organize the letter from journalists in Gaza, said “it is shameful for the media to dine and laugh with President Biden as he allows the devastation and Israeli hunger.” of Palestinians in Gaza.”

Additionally, the Adalah Justice Project began an email campaign targeting 12 media executives in several media outlets – including the Associated Press – expected to attend the dinner, who previously signed a letter calling for the protection of journalists in Gaza.

___ Associated Press writers Mike Balsamo and Fatima Hussein contributed to this report.